Loud and clear Centereach 'hams' gather to mark Marconi's birthday
By Jean-Michael Salamanca
May 02, 2008 | 03:23 PM Sometimes, especially on certain Saturday afternoons, you can still hear Gugliemlo Marconi's voice carrying around the world. The enthusiasm and love shown Saturday by the Centereach-based Radio Central Amateur Radio Club would have made Marconi proud. Radio operators and Morse code enthusiasts gathered at the Marconi Shack in Rocky Point — one of the oldest functioning radio-communications sites in the nation — to celebrate the 134th birthday of a man often recognized as the leading pioneer of wireless communication. The Marconi Shack, located next to the Frank J. Carasiti Elementary School, was constructed in 1902 to serve as a training facility for radio operators, and to communicate with ocean liners. Once owned by the inventor himself, the shack — which was restored in June 2006 and took on a new roof just last week — is now owned by the Rocky Point School District. On Saturday, the shack was alive with the past, as radio enthusiasts contacted their fellows around the nation and the world to mark the anniversary of Marconi's birth. "We put this shack back on the air once a year to celebrate Marconi's birthday," RCARC President Neil Heft radioed to another operator in Cleveland, Ohio. Other "hams" manned transceivers and contacted amateur operators across the country and, in some cases, across continents. Richard F. Pav, a member of the RCARC Board of Directors, managed to hook up Saturday with an operator in Argentina. "What really comes into focus now is people all over the world are doing the same thing that we're doing," said fellow board member Stan Bryer. The Rocky Point event was part of International Marconi Day, sponsored by the Cornish Amateur Radio Club, a British ham radio outfit. According to that club's website, International Marconi Day is held on the Saturday nearest Marconi's birthday, which is actually April 25. The event is larger in Europe, Heft noted, with over 30 stations with some tie to Marconi linking up with each other and other ham operators around the globe. The highlight of the day in Rocky Point was an unexpected visit by Albert Ficocella, an 87-year-old veteran who served as a radioman during D-Day, the historic Allied invasion of Normandy during World War II. Ficocella recalled his wartime experiences, including making contact with a German radioman during the invasion and carrying on a conversation in Morse code. "Later on, our commanding officer asked him to surrender, and the German officer in charge wanted to know what the rank [of the American officer in command] was, and he was only a captain," Ficocella remembered. "[The German officer] wouldn't surrender to a captain." When Ficocella sat down Saturday and started sending out Morse code messages again, he was surprised to see how much he recalled since the end of the war in 1945. "You know, it can't be," the veteran said. "I never thought about it. But it just came back to me now."